The Trumpology series of columns are also published on Capitol Hill Blue where I am a columnist, and are informed by my 40 years of experience as a clinical social worker and psychotherapist. I worked in Michigan as Mason Mental Health Center director and Middleboro, Massachusetts in private practice. Opinions on Trump come from my understanding of psychiatric diagnosis, psychology, and psychopathology. I consider Trump to be a sadistic impulsive malignant narcissist.

Last week, watchdog groups asked Bharara (the fired Federal DA for New York Southern District) to investigate Trump regarding foreign business deals, according to The Washington Post. The groups requested the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York look into whether the president had gotten benefits from foreign governments, in violation of the Emoluments Clause.

"I think that, again, what has been happening is that there is an air of distrust that has been brought on by President Trump himself," Cummings said Sunday.

"So I think that in part, the president has created this situation for himself. But yeah, sure, no doubt about it, when they asked about the Emoluments Clause and possible violations of it and the U.S. attorney's relationship to that, I think that had perhaps something to do with."

When pressed further on whether he thinks there might be a connection, Cummings said: "There very well may be.”

As Timothy Snyder explains in his fine and frightening recent pamphlet “On Tyranny,” a minority party now has near-total power and is therefore understandably frightened of awakening the actual will of the people. Snyder writes, “The party that exercises such control proposes few policies that are popular and several that are genuinely unpopular—and thus must either fear democracy or weaken it.” This is a toxic combination: a screw-loose leader ready to say anything, an unpopular party that wants to keep him from being exposed for what he is—even as the door swings wildly on whatever’s left of its hinges—for fear of having its policies exposed for what they are. It’s, well, crazy. And where we are.

A dangerous echo chamber emerges when a paranoid administration engages in routine motivated reasoning, as well as confirmation bias (interpreting new evidence as supporting one’s existing beliefs) and availability bias (“evidence” that is close at hand is more likely to be drawn upon). After all, the more the press, activists, and other citizens call the president out, the more paranoid, defensive, and combative he and his administration become.
Whatever the status of Trump’s mental health, the paranoia of his administration combined with his approach to reasoning and arguing are of at least as much concern—and are much easier to evaluate. I suppose that’s the good news. The bad news, of course, is that by all indications we shouldn’t expect his team to change its tack for the better any time soon.

We have a president who is detached from reality, careening from one mess to another. But who will say, the emperor has no clothes? He's so far gone that when he read his recent address to Congress straight off the teleprompter, without his usual pugnacious ranting, Republican enablers of his antics and even the media establishment he scorns applauded him for being "presidential."
Huh? The speech was a nasty wad of lies and right-wing nonsense. If the occasional appearance of sanity is all we ask of Trump, then his reign of insanity will be our fault. His loved ones and his party should intervene, for his sake and for America's. But they won't. Will we?

Question: How did Tillertson know which top senior State Department officials to fire? Putin? Why does Trump want to cut the State by 37%? Putin hates the State Department. Tillertson is a friend of Putin. Add it up.

Here’s another segment.

First Phillip Zimbardo, now another well known psychologist, Robert Jay Lifton, who most psych majors and others studied in college, has spoken out about Trump. This is in a letter to the New York Times. While this letter by Lifton and another psychiatrist (Judith Herman is no slouch either) doesn’t diagnose Trump, I’ve highlight the part that add up to a diagnosis.

‘Protect Us From This Dangerous President,’ 2 Psychiatrists Say

To the Editor:

Soon after the election, one of us raised concerns about Donald Trump’s fitness for office, based on the alarming symptoms of mental instability he had shown during his campaign. Since then, this concern has grown. Even within the space of a few weeks, the demands of the presidency have magnified his erratic patterns of behavior.

In particular, we are struck by his repeated failure to distinguish between reality and fantasy, and his outbursts of rage when his fantasies are contradicted. Without any demonstrable evidence, he repeatedly resorts to paranoid claims of conspiracy.

Most recently, in response to suggestions of contact between his campaign and agents of the Russian government, he has issued tirades against the press as an “enemy of the people” and accusations without proof that his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, engaged in partisan surveillance against him.

We are in no way offering a psychiatric diagnosis, which would be unwise to attempt from a distance. Nevertheless, as psychiatrists we feel obliged to express our alarm. We fear that when faced with a crisis, President Trump will lack the judgment to respond rationally.

The military powers entrusted to him endanger us all. We urge our elected representatives to take the necessary steps to protect us from this dangerous president.

JUDITH L. HERMAN
ROBERT JAY LIFTON, NEW YORK

Dr. Herman is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Lifton is a lecturer in psychiatry at Columbia University and professor emeritus at CUNY.

Special:

An unpublished cartoon by Alan Mayrell which you won’t see anywhere else.

Weds., Mar. 8, 2017Good read:

He is inept and incompetent. He is petulant and hugely disorganized, sloppy by multiple definitions, his harried, frustrated staff ever in a state of confusion, a mad scramble for footing that’s never to be found.

He is temperamental, raging, a truly unstable old man-child with terrible impulse control, tweeting, replete with tyyppos and ALL CAPS, one moment about how former president Obama “wire tapped” his hotel, and then, apparently bored with that extremely serious but entirely unfounded criminal accusation, choosing, less than an hour later, to blast Arnold Schwarzenegger’s low ratings on Celebrity Apprentice, the President of the United States whipsawing between whiny emotional sneer and nutball right-wing conspiracy theory like a glue-sniffing ‘tween.

There is no accounting for it all, except to suggest mental instability, a savage derangement wrought of too much power swallowed too quickly into a bloated orange fleshball completely incapable of handing it; there is no compass of any kind, nothing to prevent the President of the United States from drunk-texting America in a spazzy, demon-haunted pre-dawn fury. CONTINUED

Frotteurism is a paraphilic interest in rubbing, usually one's pelvic area or erect penis, against a non-consenting person for sexual pleasure. It may involve touching any part of the body, including the genital area. A person who practices frotteuristic acts is known as a frotteur. Toucherism is sexual arousal based on grabbing or rubbing one's hands against an unexpecting (and non-consenting) person. It usually involves touching breasts, buttocks or genital areas, often while quickly walking across the victim's path. Some psychologists consider toucherism a manifestation of frotteurism, while others distinguish the two. (Wikipedia)

Tuesday, Mar. 7, 2017Another must read for shrinks and everyone else worried about Trump’s mental health, by a distinguished psychologist who you studied if you ever took social psychology.

If you missed The Last Word with a angry Lawrence O’Donnell talking about Trump’s mental health:

“Immigrants See American Dream Fade in Wake of Surge Hate Crimes,” Sputnik News, another English language outlet bankrolled by the Kremlin, reported the same day.“America is in the grips of hatred,” the Russian television commentator Dmitry Kiselyov told viewers of the Rossiya 1 network on Sunday night. The popular host, appointed directly by Russian President Vladimir Putin, suggested the political discord could lead to violence in gun-friendly America — “a dangerous combination with free-flowing firearms,” he said.

These days, even when Russian commentators praise Trump, the compliment seems backhanded.

A CrossTalk discussion of Trump’s Tuesday address to Congress last week used terms reminiscent of Americans mocking Soviet authoritarianism.

“If you recall how they were applauding Trump, I think 95 times they stood up,” said Edward Lozansky, president of the American University in Moscow. “Even during the Brezhnev time I don't recall that the delegates to the party congress stood up and gave standing ovations 95 times.”

Monday, Mar. 6, 2017

A Daily Dose of The Donald:

Not a link. The front page says it all, aside from the instability opinion theres nothing new in the story.

The Daily News manages to refine the essence of a Trump story into a cover. Sometimes there’s actually news in the story, but often all you and millions of New Yorkers need to see is the cover. If you’ve ever visited The Big Apple you know that the major tabloids, the liberal Daily News, and the conservative Post, are at newsstands everywhere. It’s just by the GOOBERS, (chocolate covered NUTS) perfect place for the Trump stories.

Sunday, Mar. 5, 2017Evening bedtime story: \Excepts from CNN article:When the President returned to the White House Thursday evening from a day trip to Virginia, there were "a lot of expletives." The source said for more than a week Trump had been lamenting that his senior staff "just keep getting in their own way."

(Bannon and Priebus weren’t allowed to go to Mir-A-Lago this weekend –HB)

The President is showing increasing flashes of anger over the performance of his senior staff and daily developments about Russia overshadowing his message, multiple people inside the White House and outside the administration told CNN.Reassuring to have a level-headed president: Washington PostNorth Korea launches more missiles; three land in Japanese watersWashington Post - ‎23 minutes ago‎ TOKYO - North Korea launched four missiles Monday morning, a provocative barrage that coincided both with joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises on the southern half of the peninsula and with the opening of the annual National People's Congress in ...

Here’s an interesting article by a psychiatrist who more or less deftly side-steps the Goldwater Rule. I posted it in its entirety under another rule called Creative Commons since he published allowing it to be shared. It is an excellent article about alternative facts. My introduction:

Dr. Pies is a member of the American Psychiatric Association is abiding by the Goldwater rule and isn’t diagnosing a public figure from a distance. Like you, I can only speculate about what prompted him to write about alternative facts. Google news has 2.3 million results for alternative facts, almost all of them referencing he same group of people.

In fact, lest anyone think this scholarly discussion of the psychology of alternative facts, actually about those in the White House from Trump on down they only have to click on his first link in the third and fourth word which takes you to the video of the now famous interchange between Kellyanne Conway and Chuck Todd when she introduced the phrase “alternate facts” into pour the political lexicon.

Following the article I have a poll asking what you think about how the author, a psychiatrist, dealt with the Goldwater rule.

Saturday, Mar. 4, 2017

Early comments on the Trump Tweet-storm: Who said it was only the FBI wiretapping Trump?

If you’ve been hiding under your blanket this morning, here’s the latest insanity.

Trump accuses Obama of ‘wire tapping’ Trump Tower phones

So you don’t have to, here’s how Fox News is covering this weekend blockbuster. Already calling it a “witch hunt” but, defending on how define them witches may or may not be real, spies are real. My hunch is that American spies legally tapped Trump Tower with a FISA warrant, and the Russians did it as part of their major effort to control a would-be president. Watch how convoluted in-the-bag Fox News reaction in. Especially, the idea that Trump the paranoid wouldn’t have made these Tweets unless he had concrete evidence. Of course, even paranoids get wiretapped.Friday, Mar. 3, 2017

Or in English: Dr. John Gartner is not a joke. This eminent psychiatrist who has taught for over twenty years at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, is a specialist in depression and bipolar disorder. Not the kind to make a diagnosis lightly. But for him, no doubt: the American president is psychically ill, unfit to perform his duties. On the phone, he explains very seriously:

"Donald Trump suffers from serious personality disorders that make him potentially dangerous to himself, others and the world.”

The president of the first world power is, according to him, "a narcissistic psychopath, paranoid, detached from reality", a "psychiatric Frankenstein" that it is irresponsible to leave in possession of nuclear codes ...

In early February, he launched a petition calling for the removal of the president who in a few days gathered the signature of 28,000 doctors, psychiatrists and other specialists in behavioral disorders. Known for his democrat sympathies, Dr. Gartner was accused of having a partisan diagnosis. "Absurd," he replies.Weds., Mar. 1, 2017Tonight on MSNBC: Discussion of the Trump-Putin connection. — amazing breaking news which you’ll read and heat about Thursday. For now, because Sessions lied saying he didn’t talk to the Russian ambassador, within an how Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren have demand he resign. Note how Warren’s mind changed over a few minutes.

Since I began writing about my case for diagnosing Trump as mental ill back in April, I’ve read every article published by therapists about this, or referencing them. I’ve also had daily online discussions with over a dozen shrinks from around the United States and foreign countries. One of the questions we wondered about was whether Trump, suffering as he does form malignant narcissistic personality disorder, could become psychotic when things stopped going his way. This reportedly is what happened to Nixon. This is a must read by a clinical psychologist who is an expert on narcissistic personality disorder. It answers the question:

Diagnosing NPD is complicated, but the core of the disorder comprises what I call triple E: exploitation, callously using others to maintain a special status; entitlement, acting as if the world should bend to one’s will; and finally empathy-impairment, where the drive to feel special blinds people to the pain and suffering of others. More troubling, because they desperately need to feel special, people with NPD can become psychotic.

Just like narcissism and most traits or conditions, psychosis lies on a spectrum. On the low end, people become “thought-disordered,” that is, use tortured logic, deny embarrassing facts, and show horrendous judgment. On the upper end, they may have auditory and visual hallucinations and paranoid delusions. As their special status becomes threatened, people with NPD bend the truth to fit their story of who they are. If reality suggests they’re not special, but flawed, fragile, and—even worse—mediocre, then they simply ignore or distort reality.

I didn’t bother watching it, so I’ve only seen parts. In all fairness, what I saw looked pretty good… for Trump. But, that’s a low bar to have to hurdle. If he didn’t come out there and do GG Allin’s old act and leave the stage covered in bodily waste and run off with the microphone up his ass, then he put in a pretty good performance. He stuck to the teleprompter, and he did say a few good thing. It was nice to see the widow get appreciated (even though he was using her as a prop), and I was glad to see him finally condemn the attacks on the Jewish community (and it’s weird that doing so counts as an act of bravery for Trump, who can’t stand to go against any of the people who “like” him). So, overall, I’ll give him some props… based on the clips, and graded on a scale.

But, y’know what? None of it matters a damn, because this president has ZERO credibility with any thinking person. He’s burned that to the waterline. Trump is a blatant liar. He lies about everything. He lies about things he doesn’t even need to lie about, and lies about stuff that we all witnessed. Seriously, at least two thirds of the things that come out of his mouth are complete bullshit. I don’t trust this pud to truthfully tell me what he had for lunch. He lies about when the sun’s shining and when it’s not, for fucksake, so who can believe him on anything else? It’s a con game, which is why I didn’t bother sitting through the whole thing. When someone’s a pathological liar, and his staff writers are evil, cynical manipulators, I have no reason to listen to a speech they make, because I’m not a moron, and I’m not about to believe that shit. I know what he is, he’s proven it multiple times, and so however well he reads it off, or however nice white supremacist pieces of shit like Bannon and Miller have made their deceptions sound, is im-fucking-material. I don’t have time for ‘em and there’s no point. It’s like listening to Ted Bundy read an essay by Gloria Steinham — the words will be nice, but you know that no matter what they say, the guy reading them is going to murder some woman within the week.

The speech didn’t matter at all, except to the people who support him. They loved it, but they’re lost-fucking-causes who’ll believe anything. I’m amazed these people get through their day without a minder. They’re the people who are out buying new furniture because they’re about to become insanely rich due to a deal they made with an Ethiopian prince who contacted them in their e-mail. I look at Twitter and all these people who are bursting with pride because they ate up every word Trump said, and I just shake my head at what’s become of intelligence in this country. I know it’s “mean” and some would say counterproductive to call them idiots, but, I don’t care… I’ve lived around these people my entire life here in my red Southern state, and I’m not P.C. enough to not call them what they are… which is a bunch of barely-functional idiots. And there’s no reason to be diplomatic about that, because being “nice” to them is never going to reach them, anyway — they’ll never believe you, because they’re already locked onto what they want to think, and it’s being fed pure candy bullshit, and they’re happy little drones.

They want to believe the shit Trump tells them, and they’re terrified of not being in a homogenized, safe, unchallenged majority where all their comforting superstitions and bad ideas are supported. Anyone cynical and conscience-less enough to tell them the lies they want to hear can lead them to the slaughter like a pack of sheep. And Bannon (because, face it, that’s who’s really the president) is sociopath enough to do it. He knows they’re stupid, and he feels nothing about exploiting them. And, really, maybe he shouldn’t. Their stupidity is at such an infuriating level that you almost want to punish them for it by leading them into a trap.

And, they’re in one now, for certain. They’re “bursting with pride” over the speech of a guy who’s pissing all over ‘em. They just don’t know it yet. But, like every cow that’s ever been led down a kill-chute, they’ll get sledgehammered with a nice surprise at the end. Then they’ll wail “I didn’t know!” no matter how hard we tried to tell them.

Tuesday, Feb, 28, 2017I think we all need a dose of Jon Stewart right about now.

Here’s a challenge for my psychotherapist friends who consider Trump to be suffering from various psychiatric disorders. This article won’t change my mind and I doubt it will change yours. However, it is what Trump supporters want to believe that his impulsivity and just plain weirdness is part of a calculated act. The observations from the people who worked for Trump decades ago is important to factor into figuring out how much of Trump’s behavior is personality disorder and how much is cultivated persona.

So while smart, experienced political professionals havecalled the start to the Trump presidency unprecedented in the annals of the office, it is not unprecedented in the annals of Trump. Trump has managed in the Oval Office in Washington pretty much exactly the way he managed on Fifth Avenue in New York, say people who worked for him at different points over the last 45 years as well as writers of the best, most thoroughly reported Trump biographies. In recent interviews, they recounted a shrewd, slipshod, charming, vengeful, thin-skinned, belligerent, hard-charging manager who was an impulsive hirer and a reluctant firer and surrounded himself with a small cadre of ardent loyalists; who solicited their advice but almost always ultimately went with his gut and did what he wanted; who kept his door open and expected others to do the same not because of a desire for transparency but due to his own insecurities and distrusting disposition; who fostered a frenetic, internally competitive, around-the-clock, stressful, wearying work environment in which he was a demanding, disorienting mixture of hands-on and hands-off—a hesitant delegator and an intermittent micromanager who favored fast-twitch wins over long-term follow-through, promotion over process and intuition over deliberation. Read, analyze, and discuss.

As far as other nice things the former president said about how the thing squatting in the Oval Office is a real fuckup, Dubya said he’s not sure whether we need a special prosecutor to investigate Trump’s connections with Russia, but he’d be cool with it. For some reason Bush has faith in GOP Sen. Richard Burr, head of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and that he’ll get to the bottom of things with his investigation. (He should not have faith in Richard Burr.) The former president says we definitely “need answers” about just how far up Trump’s ass Vladimir Putin’s arm is, though, so that’s good.

On Trump’s Muslim ban, Dubya said, “It’s very important for all of us to recognize one of our great strengths is for people to be able to worship they way they want to, or not worship at all” and also “I am for an immigration policy that is welcoming and upholds the law.” MORE SHOTS FIRED!

Finally, Matt Lauer asked Dubya what he thought of Donald Trump crying about “American carnage” during his inauguration, and Dubya laughed, because Dubya might be A Idiot, but at least he’s not as dumb as Donald Trump.

Listening to Trump address governors I am stuck again by how inarticulate he is when he isn’t reading. In fact, he manages to mangle most grammatical sentences written for him with his unscripted interjections. Some are asides, others are braggadocio. I plan to skip his “big speech” to Congress as I have better things to do (clean behind the refrigerator). I wonder if he’ll stick to the prepared remarks. Does he have the discipline to do this? Having a president veer off the prepared remarks is refreshing if done in a limited way and the ad-libs aren’t repeats of catch phrases. Of course Trump doesn’t write his speeches. Since Obama took speeches that were written for him and reportedly made them his own, he didn’t have to lapse into digressions. Of course Obama never bragged. He never repeated the last half of a sentence for emphasis.When Trump talked about health care he contradicted himself. First he mused over letting Obamacare prove itself a failure over the next two years so nobody blames the Republicans for the rough start of their replacement. Then he hedged and was unclear whether he wanted to support passing the repeal and replace as soon as possible. He said health care was more complicated than he originally thought. David Corn, the frequent guest n MSNBC, (who thinks like I do that Trump is mentally ill) put this right into a Tweet.

Sunday, Feb. 26, 2017A little Sunday Snark:

LINK TO ARTICLE: CLICK IMAGE

Saturday, Feb. 25, 2017What are allies think of Trump: France

PARIS, Feb 25 (Reuters) - French President Francois Hollande fired back at Donald Trump on Saturday after the U.S. president remarked in a speech that a friend thought “Paris is no longer Paris” after attacks by Islamist militants.Hollande said Trump should show support for U.S. allies.
“There is terrorism and we must fight it together. I think that it is never good to show the smallest defiance toward an allied country. I wouldn’t do it with the United States and I’m urging the U.S. president not to do it with France,” Hollande said.
“I won’t make comparisons but here, people don’t have access to guns. Here, you don’t have people with guns opening fire on the crowd simply for the satisfaction of causing drama and tragedy,”Hollande said, responding to questions during a visit at the Paris Agric fair.
During a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, Trump repeated his criticism of Europe’s handling of attacks by Islamist militants saying a friend “Jim” no longer wanted to take his family to Paris.
More than 230 people have died in a series of assaults in France since the beginning of 2015, and the country has been under a state of emergency rules since November the same year.
Trump’s comments also drew a rebuke from the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo.

He ranks high on my list of reprehensible Republicans, so I was surprised to this:

“You cannot have somebody who was on the campaign and who is an appointee,” the GOP congressman says.

Considering my Daily Kos story, it would be astounding if it was Issa, not McCain or Graham, who was the congressional Republican who history will remember as starting the ball rolling which lead to Trump’s impeachment.

How can we make facts matter? Research in psychology and political science offers a little hope.

Last night: Lawrence O’Donnell is taking up the cause of proving Trump is mentally ill. I won’t take credit but I’ve been Tweeting him links to articles for two months, and he has indicated he’s seen them on my Twitter account. Tonight he re-interviewed psychiatrist Lance Dodes, along with Lee Seidel who wrote this Columbia Journalism Review about the media needing to be forthright in explaining that Trump is mentally ill.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, this is a common white supremacist hand sign “particularly” used in California. (Stephen Miller is from Santa Monica.)

More below - there are too many nauseating descriptions of him dating back to high school to quote.

I think we are on the brink of destruction so it is with mixed feelings that I post a video that has gone viral which may either make you smile or wince.I try not to let any sense of optimism creep into my dour psyche. Dare I suggest that perhaps some Republicans who aren't members of the Trump cult are starting to use something besides their lizard brains?

President Trump's approval rating has slipped to 38 percent, a new national poll finds.

The Quinnipiac University survey released on Wednesday says that only 38 percent of Americans approve of Trump's job performance, while 55 percent disapprove.

According to Quinnipiac, the 17-point difference in Trump's approval rating is the worst he's fared in a poll since taking office in January.

An earlier survey from the pollster this month registered Trump with 42 percent approval and 51 percent disapproval.

“President Trump’s popularity is sinking like a rock," Tim Malloy, the assistant director of the poll, said in a statement announcing the findings.

He gets slammed on

honesty,

empathy,

level headedness

the ability to unite.

And two of his strong points:

leadership and intelligence

are sinking to new lows. This is a terrible survey one month in.” From The Hill

Weds. Feb. 22, 2017New:

Today’s news:Fortunately someone else wrote what I was going to write about the two psychotherapists who appeared on The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell Tuesday night.

What do I think about and what I do I think about it?

May, 1, 2016

I migrated everything from April to the basement file cabinet, so fitting of Spring, this blog starts anew, unfortunately, again it’s Trump on my mind. The archives for the two months I have been sharing cyberspace with billions of bloggers are below.

If you are a new reader, welcome. I do this blog alone, but always welcome critiques and ideas from you, I mean you, whoever is actually reading these words.